Friday, May 4, 2012

Smaller Sizes, Bigger Lies

Retiree Chan, 76, remembered fondly that his previous home, a four-room HDB flat in the 1980s, boasted a size of 105 sq m, or 1,130 sq ft. Today, four-room flats built by HDB have shrunk to about 90 sq m, or 969 sq ft.

In Nov 2011, speaking at the HDB Professional Forum held at DB Hub Auditorium, HDB chief executive Cheong Koon Hean confirmed same, that it reduced flat sizes in the mid-1990s. What riled just about everybody was her perverse justification that household sizes in HDB flats had decreased from 4.6 people in the 1980s to 3.4, ergo the shrinking floor area. Thanks to Cheong, the average HDB flat will be not be a conducive nest to grow a larger family, and improve the total fertility rate. Oh, we forgot - the hidden agenda to import foreigners to dilute the Singaporean breed, people like the fictitious Deutsche Bank employee from the Philippines who pledged undying support for the PM on his Facebook wall ("Please remain as our leader for as long as you can. Only you sir can lead this nation to continued success").

If you buy Ms Cheong's line of argument, living space per person actually improved to 26 sq m to 32 sq m for four- and five-room flats in new projects - up from the 23 sq m to 27 sq m for the same types of flats built during the 1980s.

The only glitch is that it makes National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan a liar. At the annual REACH Contributors' Forum on Wednesday night, he told a student from the National University of Singapore that HDB flats are not shrinking, contrary to popular belief. In fact, sizes of HDB flats have been the same for the past 15 years - 1997 onwards. The trick, you see, is selecting the timeline for the illusion of truth. If you go back further in time, back in the good old days of Lim Kim San, HDB flats were factually affordable. If you had $1,000 a month then, back in the 1980s, you would probably have snubbed HDB and gone straight into private property.

The Minister promised that Singapore will not go the way of Hong Kong, where flats are "far smaller". But would you buy a second hand car from a guy who once boasted he paid only $8 for open heart surgery? "In the past five years, the population was growing rapidly that infrastructure could not keep up so because of the temporary imbalance, prices shot up," Khaw explained, conveniently skipping the part where HDB joined in the feeding frenzy of the property developers to rip off those desperate for a simple roof over their heads. The average flat size may have shrunk by about 10 percent, but the prices have jumped more than 10 fold. The lies have also grown more audacious.

"Centre for Sustainable Asian Cities director Malone-Lee Lai Choo felt that there is room to increase built-up land to 70 per cent and for the population to grow to 6.5 million.... Currently, Singapore's built up land has a net density of 12,400 persons per square km. Net density in Hong Kong, she noted, is 26,000 persons per sq km."

What she is saying is that our flat sizes should shrink by 100% to accomodate 6.5 million, so that we will have the same built-up net density as Hong Kong. What she did not say is that Hong Kong has a much larger green area than Singapore. It is also disconcerting when city planners treat everthing in terms of numbers without understanding the social impact of overcrowding.

Khaw, you are all right! HDB flat sizes only shrank by 10% over the last 20 years. Pay no heed to this Malone-Lee, who is obviously spouting nonsense.

I know you "stand corrected" over your disingenuous statements. But we are still waiting for you to tell us how much it costs to build a HDB flat, and the amount paid to SLA for the land.

HDB is of no difference from those greedy private property developers, decreasing size of houses and increasing their prices at the same time. Worse than those private developers, is that most of their lands are acquired at dirt cheap prices through forced acquisitions, making them earn higher profit margins than those private developers. If they like to behave this way, they must as well, leave the government to become businessmen?

Not really sure of Khaw's capability, considering the state of healthcare under his charge for the past 5-10 years - not enough hospital beds, doctors, nurses, high medical expenses that he told us we can go to JB if we can't afford local healthcare costs.

Only someone in PAP praised Khaw but did they asked the people about his performance? No. Its what they want to project their ministers. You think PAP gona to tell the people so and so minister is not up to the mark? Please lah

U are not fully correct...u are correct though about the LSS, Vivian and Keechiew/10 carrot cake clowns...also yacob 1 flood every 50 years...as for the rest of them...they just real human sized parasites feeding off those who are their betters...why because we "forced" to feed them, clothed them and pay life until dead pensions...indirectly too we do the same for their loved ones and children...

Yes they took these LEEGALLY away from their betters when it is most needed for their owned loved ones...

That filipion working the DB / German bank in Singapore is right...LHL should and must support all these foreign imports...they are more important than the local singaporeans...

Interesting no...and very sad too.

I won't fight for the PAP gov't...they can go fark themselves and died.

I will ONLY fight for Singapore and its people...never for the SCUMS PARASITES IN WHITE!

Yes, this is kind of rational arguments which the internet provides to debunk all the statistics the government Ministers throw at us. But hail no, what the government sees of the Internet is one which hunt gone wrong and uses that as a statistic to control the web spere. Anyway to all those who have raised your concerns here, please do more, talk to your friends and family, explain to them what's happening, ask them to vote wisely in 2016 to ensure the future of the true singaporean and their children. Remember not many read the web and with the army of grassroot bootlickers spreading government propaganda, every one of us much do our part. If you can convince one person, that would be the start.

wake up, we may be daft but we are not idiots. please try much harder, how to buy such craps ?!$1000 salary can buy flat ?inflation does not affect average singaporeans ? increasing the low wage workers' pay are dangerous and so on !!

Pls stop all these above craps and get your hands dirty and do some real work !!

The ST reporter, Jessica Cheam, later wrote this on her Facebook page:

A few people have asked me if it’s really true that #HDB flats have not shrunk in the past 15 years. And why it doesn’t match a previous report I wrote in Nov last year on the same issue. I’ve doublechecked with HDB and both reports are right – Minister Khaw is accurate in saying the flat size hasn’t changed in the past 15 years because the mid-90s was the last time that HDB changed flat sizes.

So, more accurately – The size of a four-room flat, for example, has been 90 sq m since the mid-90s. It was 100 sq m prior to that, and 105 sq m in the 1980s, according to HDB figures. (emphasis added)

The table given to us by HDB in the Nov report used a more generic timeframe (1980s, 1990s, 2000s) to show the sizes over the decades.

So yes, HDB flat sizes have shrunk in the past 3 decades – but it has not shrunk over the past 15 years.

Stats is like that. You use the portion that benefit you. Hide the rest and bull everyone. Why you think we all feel the pain of inflation and the government says most are not affected. This is real bull-shit but there again, ministers with such a high pay and allowances will not be affected. So, they are not entirely wrong. Some people really are not affected by inflation. That is statistics.

his work last time is look after hospital onethis type of work also must look after old people sick peoplebut he never do properly his workcome out talk also never talk nicelyeverything not accurate and always liein the end he got punished lorhe kena heart attacknever die never mindstill talk big and boast about his $8 billgive him one chanceso fast forget already

but he still not scaredthat's why i say he really the canthis time he also do samemeaning he do work also same never do properlytell lies also gotonly not same is he tell lies got improvethe lies now more hard to catch

but he no understandnot we people catch onethis time i really not sure how he get punishlast time one we knowhis work is look after housevery easy to work onelike that job also cannot do properlyhuman do things must honestbut this bugger do no nice still lie say nicei scared for himthis time he go, he not coming back again

This Khaw is really good at twisting the truth to mislead people with his $8-heart surgery and the the deliberate use of time-frame to argue that there is no change in size of HDB flat. Cunning as a snake, never trust this type of politicians. Objective is not to improve the life of the people but to mislead them to think he had really improve their life.

I read that ST has someone coming out to say that Both Mr Khaw & his HDB CEO , Dr Cheong were correct.Again, the elites, always qualify their proclamations with differing time period etc...It is like saying, that poor cleaner's pay did not suffer any drop since end April 2012.......(Hope I am shooting my feet. Just in case, some heartless DID hand out a pay cut end April !)

About Me

"There is nothing to prevent you from pushing your propaganda, to push your programme out either to the students or with the public at large... and if you can carry the ground, if you are right, you win. That's democracy. We're not preventing anybody" ~ Lee Kuan Yew, 31 January 2005